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Register a new userThe three-parameter correlations about optical plateaus of gamma-ray bursts
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Well-sampled optical light curves of 50 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with plateau features are compiled from the literature. By empirical fitting, we obtained the parameters of the optical plateaus, such as the decay slopes ($alpha_{rm 1}$ and $alpha_{rm 2}$), the break times ($T_{rm b}$), and the corresponding optical fluxes ($F_{rm b}$) at the break times. The break time of optical plateaus ranges from tens of seconds to $10^6$ seconds, with a typical value about $10^4$ seconds. We have calculated the break luminosity, and it mainly ranges from $10^{44}$ erg $s^{-1}$ to $10^{47}$ erg $s^{-1}$, which is generally two or three orders of magnitude less than the corresponding break luminosity of the X-ray afterglow plateaus. We reanalyzed the optical plateaus and also found that a significantly tighter correlation exists when we added the isotropic equivalent energy of GRBs $E_{rm gamma,iso}$ into the $L_{rm b,z}-T_{rm b,z}$ relation. The best fit correlation is obtained to be $L_{rm b,z}propto T_{rm b,z}^{-0.9}E_{rm gamma,iso}^{0.4}$. We next explored the possible correlations among $L_{rm b,z}$, $T_{rm b,z}$ and $E_{rm p,i}$, and found there is also a tight correlation between them, which takes the form of $L_{rm b,z}propto T_{rm b,z}^{-0.9}E_{rm p,i}^{0.5}$. We argue that these two tight $L_{rm b,z}-T_{rm b,z}-E_{rm gamma,iso}$ and $L_{rm b,z}-T_{rm b,z}-E_{rm p,i}$ correlations are more physical, and it may be directly related to radiation physics of GRBs. The tight correlations are possible to be used as standard candles.
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The optical light-curves of GRB afterglows display either peaks or plateaus. We identify 16 afterglows of the former type, 17 of the latter, and 4 with broad peaks, that could be of either type. The optical energy release of these two classes is similar and is correlated with the GRB output, the correlation being stronger for peaky afterglows, which suggests that the burst and afterglow emissions of peaky afterglows are from the same relativistic ejecta and that the optical emission of afterglows with plateaus arises more often from ejecta that did not produce the burst emission. Consequently, we propose that peaky optical afterglows are from impulsive ejecta releases and that plateau optical afterglows originate from long-lived engines, the break in the optical light-curve (peak or plateau end) marking the onset of the entire outflow deceleration. In the peak luminosity--peak time plane, the distribution of peaky afterglows displays an edge with L_p propto t_p^{-3}, which we attribute to variations (among afterglows) in the ambient medium density. The fluxes and epochs of optical plateau breaks follow a L_b propto t_b^{-1} anticorrelation. Sixty percent of 25 afterglows that were well-monitored in the optical and X-rays show light-curves with comparable power-law decays indices and achromatic breaks. The other 40 percent display three types of decoupled behaviours: i) chromatic optical light-curve breaks (perhaps due to the peak of the synchrotron spectrum crossing the optical), ii) X-ray flux decays faster than in the optical (suggesting that the X-ray emission is from local inverse-Compton scattering), and iii) chromatic X-ray light-curve breaks (indicating that the X-ray emission is from external up-scattering).
Afterglows of gamma-ray bursts often show flares, plateaus, and sudden intensity drops: these temporal features are difficult to explain as coming from the forward shock. We calculate radiative properties of early GRB afterglows with the dominant contribution from the reverse shock (RS) propagating in an ultra-relativistic (pulsar-like) wind produced by the long-lasting central engine. RS emission occurs in the fast cooling regime -- this ensures high radiative efficiency and allows fast intensity variations. We demonstrate that: (i) mild wind power, of the order of $sim 10^{46}$ erg s$^{-1}$, can reproduce the afterglows plateau phase; (ii) termination of the wind can produce sudden steep decays; (iii) mild variations in the wind luminosity can produce short-duration afterglow flares.
I investigate the origin of the observed correlation between a GRBs nuFnu spectral peak Epk and its isotropic equivalent energy Eiso through the use of a population synthesis code to model the prompt gamma-ray emission from GRBs. By using prescriptions for the distribution of prompt spectral parameters as well as the populations luminosity function and co-moving rate density, I generate a simulated population of GRBs and examine how bursts of varying spectral properties and redshift would appear to a gamma-ray detector here on Earth. I find that a strong observed correlation can be produced between the source frame Epk and Eiso for the detected population despite the existence of only a weak and broad correlation in the original simulated population. The energy dependance of a gamma-ray detectors flux-limited detection threshold acts to produce a correlation between the source frame Epk and Eiso for low luminosity GRBs, producing the left boundary of the observed correlation. Conversely, very luminous GRBs are found at higher redshifts than their low luminosity counterparts due to the standard Malquest bias, causing bursts in the low Epk, high Eiso regime to go undetected because their Epk values would be redshifted to energies at which most gamma-ray detectors become less sensitive. I argue that it is this previously unexamined effect which produces the right boundary of the observed correlation. Therefore, the origin of the observed correlation is a complex combination of the instruments detection threshold, the intrinsic cutoff in the GRB luminosity function, and the broad range of redshifts over which GRBs are detected. These simulations serve to demonstrate how selection effects caused by a combination of instrumental sensitivity and the cosmological nature of an astrophysical population can act to produce an artificially strong correlation between observed properties.
We collect and reanalyze about 200 GRB data of prompt-emission with known redshift observed until the end of 2009, and select 101 GRBs which were well observed to have good spectral parameters to determine the spectral peak energy ($E_p$), 1-second peak luminosity ($L_p$) and isotropic energy ($E_{rm iso}$). Using our newly-constructed database with 101 GRBs, we first revise the $E_p$--$L_p$ and $E_p$--$E_{rm iso}$ correlations. The correlation coefficients of the revised correlations are 0.889 for 99 degree of freedom for the $E_p$--$L_p$ correlation and 0.867 for 96 degree of freedom for the $E_p$--$E_{rm iso}$ correlation. These values correspond to the chance probability of $2.18 times 10^{-35}$ and $4.27 times 10^{-31}$, respectively. It is a very important issue whether these tight correlations are intrinsic property of GRBs or caused by some selection effect of observations. In this paper, we examine how the truncation of the detector sensitivity affects the correlations, and we conclude they are surely intrinsic properties of GRBs. Next we investigate origins of the dispersion of the correlations by studying their brightness and redshift dependence. Here the brightness (flux or fluence) dependence would be regarded as an estimator of the bias due to the detector threshold. We find a weak fluence-dependence in the $E_p$--$E_{rm iso}$ correlations and a redshift dependence in the $E_p$--$L_p$ correlation both with 2 $sigma$ statistical level. These two effects may contribute to the dispersion of the correlations which is larger than the statistical uncertainty. We discuss a possible reason of these dependence and give a future prospect to improve the correlations.
It is now more than 40 years since the discovery of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and in the last two decades there has been major progress in the observations of bursts, the afterglows and their host galaxies. This recent progress has been fueled by the ability of gamma-ray telescopes to quickly localise GRBs and the rapid follow-up observations with multi-wavelength instruments in space and on the ground. A total of 674 GRBs have been localised to date using the coded aperture masks of the four gamma-ray missions, BeppoSAX, HETE II, INTEGRAL and Swift. As a result there are now high quality observations of more than 100 GRBs, including afterglows and host galaxies, revealing the richness and progress in this field. The observations of GRBs cover more than 20 orders of magnitude in energy, from 10^-5 eV to 10^15 eV and also in two non-electromagnetic channels, neutrinos and gravitational waves. However the continuation of progress relies on space based instruments to detect and rapidly localise GRBs and distribute the coordinates.
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